The potential of Cyprus as a sport tourism market: viewpoints of municipal administrators

by Nicos L. Kartakoullis (Centre for Leisure, Tourism, Sports Research and Development, School of Business, University of Nicosia), George Karlis, Thanos Kriemadis (Department of Sport Management, University of Peloponnese, Greece), Stavros Pouloukas (Department of Statistics, University of Nicosia), & Christina Loizou (Centre for Leisure, Tourism, Sports Research and Development)

Abstract:
Traditionally, the sun, sea and beautiful beaches were enough to make Cyprus a prime tourist destination. Recent declines in incoming tourist visitations has enticed the Cyprus Tourism Organization to go beyond the traditional tourism marketing employed to consider new selling features of tourism such as sport tourism. The purpose of this paper is to examine the viewpoints of upper management municipal administrators for the establishment of Cyprus as a potential sport tourism market. Face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted with upper management administrators from nine selected municipalities of Cyprus. Data was analyzed using Creswell’s (1998) Data Analysis Spiral. The results revealed that: (1) municipal administrators tended to have a limited understanding of the magnitude of the concept sport tourism, (2) municipal administrators believe that they have good facilities and infrastructure that could be utilized for sports tourism development, (3) municipal administrators are in full support of the utilization of physical resources (i.e., lakes and water dams) for regional sport tourism development, (4) municipal administrators consider sport tourism to be good quality tourism, and (5) municipal administrators are in favor of sports tourism development.

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